Currently, my photo computer (late 2012 Mac Mini) is downstairs and attached to a external drive set up as RAID 1 (mirrored) that has all my LR photos. The computer communicates with my home network either via wifi or ethernet via a power line adapter which is slow. I also have a Drobo FS connected to the router upstairs but is very very slow to access and read/write to. I didn't know that Drobo's have a reputation for being very slow. In fact, when I set up LR to import and back up a 2nd copy to the Drobo upstairs via wifi or powerline, the function often fails as it is too slow.

My question is if I get a Synology NAS, could speeds improve? Do others use a NAS via wifi within the same home to back up their photos? I could easily get a larger thunderbolt or USB3 external drive but would like others in the family to have access to storage as well. The NAS would be for the rare instance that my RAID I drive would fail, not to retrieve on a daily basis and back up speeds in general aren't an issue if the initial LR import and back up to a NAS would work.

Your fastest connection will be by direct connected external drive. Invest in a couple 7200 rpm external drives and use them as backup.Part of the issue is the network itself plus the mini will not support NIC teaming that most of the NAS results are based on.Have a look at smallnetbuilder.com and the NSPT file and directory benchmarks for NAS's without teaming for realistic bandwidth measurement.

My files and catalogues are on an external drive attached to a Mac Mini server. That way any computer can access the photos. The Mac mini server backs up each night using Time Machine. It backs to whichever of several external drives is connected and on alternate nights to the Drobo which is accessed by ethernet. Drobo is very slow even on ethernet, though I doubt any NAS is going to be much faster. The external drives I rotate each month and I regard them as my main backups. The Drobo is a backup of last resort.

I do use a Synology NAS for backup only (412+ or something like this). The backup goes through the ethernet and while I don't usually measure the speeds I think they were around 100 Mbps or so, nothing that I really notice as being slow. It can also be accessed from the wifi but that is more dependent on the wifi than anything else so you should maybe try to update your wifi, maybe to ac?If I get some time I could run some testing for both speeds although my oldish router doesn't particularly like my desktop.

Be aware that for many NAS, the limitation is not the ethernet (mine is directly connected) but the low cost, low power processor. NAS= Not A Server, for IT folks. It's fine for routine back-ups, and for streaming my music collection when the PC is off, but I would not even think of trying to use it as a working drive. Just trying to rebuild a database and accessing a file at the same time will cause mine to fall over.

Thanks for all of your responses. I think an external HD attached to my computer is the way to go. However, I just read that you can attach a USB external drive to a router and have it behave like a NAS. I have the Apple AirPort extreme which has a USB 2.0 port. Would this be any faster either via wifi or ethernet (via Powerline)?

The issue isn't the drobo - it's the network. Is it powerline or wifi, as having both can add additional issues. If you move your drobo downstairs and plug it and the Mac into a switch (then into the wall power adapter) transfers to the drobo will be much much faster. Your real fix is to either relocate the Drobo to near the Mac Mini (via a gigabit switch), or to run a cat5e cable between the locations.

The Drobo is a bettter NAS than what most routers will do - and the Airport Extreme isn't designed for doing file sharing.

I have read various reports about many people complaining that the Drobo is indeed very slow, mostly due to its internal processing. Think about 30Mbyte/s real world bandwidth. With my Synology 4 disk RAID-5 NAS I get 100Mbyte/s real world bandwidth. This is over wired Gigabit Ethernet.

If you want better than this I think you should use a multi disk storage device with a Thunderbolt interface.

With NAS it depends on the device and its processor and RAM and operating system. I have gone from Buffalo to Netgear to Synology to QNAP and have increased performance with each new generation of RAID NAS. For my home network the primary NAS is connected via 1GB Ethernet to a 1GB switch and to the switch I have a business class Wifi router. Workstations use the Ethernet connection and laptops access is via the 802.11n router.

For backing up the QNAP to a Synology the fastest way is NAS to NAS using both boxes USB 3 ports. I keep the Synology NAS offsite so in the event of a burglary or a fire our data is still OK.

If I am moving a lot of data to or from a laptop I connect its Ethernet port to the switch as I get much faster data I/O speeds.

Be aware that for many NAS, the limitation is not the ethernet (mine is directly connected) but the low cost, low power processor. NAS= Not A Server, for IT folks. It's fine for routine back-ups, and for streaming my music collection when the PC is off, but I would not even think of trying to use it as a working drive. Just trying to rebuild a database and accessing a file at the same time will cause mine to fall over.

The synology and qnap ones have modern processors, lots of memory and can run all sorts of applications They also have hardware encryption, dynamic expansion (not as easy as the drobos but they do work) and virtualization. A DS1815 by example has a 2.4ghz quad core atom (intel) processor and 2GB of RAM that you can expand later. Upstream, some of the boxes have i7 and 4GB of ram (exp to 16GB). They also support native expansion boxes via esata and in the case of the thunderbolt qnap (does ethernet over thunderbolt, plus gigabit and optional 10gbit) has a base memory of 16GB. The middle boxes and up support VMWare, so they are not toys.

B&H have both brands and good info on the configurations.

Best regards,

-----An example: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1092655-REG/synology_ds1815_8_bay_usb_esata.htmlPlease notice that you should not be adding disks with lower capacity after the fact. You start with 2TB drives and then add 2TB or bigger disks (it's not a drobo). Under the hood the array will partition the drives and use Linux to combine the volumes (with the same raid level), once you have enough drives to provide the same level of protection. Note: I am not affiliated with them.

I have read various reports about many people complaining that the Drobo is indeed very slow, mostly due to its internal processing. Think about 30Mbyte/s real world bandwidth. With my Synology 4 disk RAID-5 NAS I get 100Mbyte/s real world bandwidth. This is over wired Gigabit Ethernet.

If you want better than this I think you should use a multi disk storage device with a Thunderbolt interface.

Also Drobos are limited to 16TB partition max. Some of them like the new b800n are limited to 64GB and the B1200i to 128GB if my memory is not failing. But the price is no longer there. We use to pay for beyond raid, nowadays both qnap and synology can provide expansion. It's not the dream that we have with the drobo but it does work.

With NAS it depends on the device and its processor and RAM and operating system. I have gone from Buffalo to Netgear to Synology to QNAP and have increased performance with each new generation of RAID NAS. For my home network the primary NAS is connected via 1GB Ethernet to a 1GB switch and to the switch I have a business class Wifi router. Workstations use the Ethernet connection and laptops access is via the 802.11n router.

For backing up the QNAP to a Synology the fastest way is NAS to NAS using both boxes USB 3 ports. I keep the Synology NAS offsite so in the event of a burglary or a fire our data is still OK.

If I am moving a lot of data to or from a laptop I connect its Ethernet port to the switch as I get much faster data I/O speeds.

You have my recommended configuration , with a VPN to a friend home or colocation place. If money is not at option a iosafe (a rugedised synology) can be added. I send processed files to the could.

With the larger Synology (8 bay) or 5 bay + expansion is it possible to start with 5 drives, configure as a Raid 5, then add 2 or 3 more (as needed) individual drives and run them as JBOD? If so can they be loaded and be seen with existing data (from a USB enclosure) without reformatting? All of these would be 6TB drives, I'm aware of the limitation of not being able to add smaller drives.

With the larger Synology (8 bay) or 5 bay + expansion is it possible to start with 5 drives, configure as a Raid 5, then add 2 or 3 more (as needed) individual drives and run them as JBOD? If so can they be loaded and be seen with existing data (from a USB enclosure) without reformatting? All of these would be 6TB drives, I'm aware of the limitation of not being able to add smaller drives.

Thanks

The Synology runs linux, and will want to format the drives accordingly. If you format the drive in the Synology, then take it out and load it with content - without formatting the drive - it should work. Worst case load a drive, plug it in via USB3 and log in via ssh to copy it onto the internal volume.

Thanks Joe. I had a talk and email conversation with the support guys at Synology and decided that I'd be better off keeping my extra drives as windows so that I could easily transfer them to any kind of case and plug them directly into any PC down the road. Because of that I went with the 1515 with five 6TB drives, I have 1 spare in case of a fail. It's up and running and yesterday I finished loading it with all the data from my other combination of drives. When we start seeing Thunderbolt 3 cases I plan to add a card to my PC (or maybe upgrade the PC) so that I can use TB3 for main processing and also plug USB 3.1 drives into the TB3 port for faster support when I need them (for example coming back from a road trip with several hundred GB of files). To add flexibility I've been trying out laptops with TB3 ports, but all have flaws so far (not related to TB3) and I've returned them. Maybe the 2nd round will fix the issues I've seen, but at least as the NAS is concerned I think I'm in pretty good shape. Thanks again.